race

Sign a petition calling for an end to Phila Police - I.C.E. collaboration.

In late April Arizona Governor signed Senate Bill 1070 into law. SB 1070, also know as the ‘Papers Please’ law, mandates that all police officers inquire about immigration status if the officer has “reasonable suspicion” that a person is undocumented. This state sanctioned racial profiling has received intense opposition from across the country, with major political and cultural figures such as basketball player Charles Barkley speaking out against it.

Philadelphia has been participating in a program similar to SB1070 for the past 2 years.

The Philadelphia Police Department collaborates closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that focuses on deportation and detention. In the early winter of 2009 Mayor Nutter re-established a policy of "non-inquiry," which prohibits police officers or any other city employee from asking about immigration status.

In the midst of the Arizona state government passing the most outrageous anti-immigrant law since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, several happenings pass unnoticed by the national media. At a packed Flagstaff City Council meeting discussing the law, waves of people declare publicly that they are undocumented, practically daring law enforcement officers to arrest them.

While Philadelphia has a long and dirty history of white supremacist violence, Philly also has a long, strong and beautiful history of racial justice organizing and victories. Diverse participation, people of color leadership, and white antiracist solidarity have always strengthened this racial justice work, although that language has not always been there. In the last few years, we have seen a dramatic conversation about race evolving around us: from the victory of President Obama to the racist, hate-mongering Tea Parties; from the struggle to keep libraries open and operating to the escalation of xenophobia and ethnic cleansing in Arizona, we see race being talked about from a lot of different angles.

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Human Rights Coalition Action Alert- May 9, 2010

HRC report spurs retaliation by SCI Dallas staff

Prisoners beaten, shackled and starved by vengeful guards in campaign of terror

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Monitor http://www.freemumia.com/ and http://abu-jamal-news.com/ for news, analysis and emergency response plans

The Supreme Court has tossed out a lower court ruling that nullified the death sentence for former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. The appeals court now has the option of re-imposing the death sentence or ordering a new federal trial to hear other claims of injustice raised by Abu-Jamal.

On Tuesday May 12, the remaining LOVE Park 4 defendants - Jason Robbins, Tom Keenan and Jared Schultz - appeared in court yet again. This hearing thankfully moved in a forward direction, instead of resulting in another continuance in a long line of delays dating back almost two years.

At the 24th anniversary of the May 13 massacre, MOVE organizes for 2009 Parole Hearings

By Hans Bennett

(Born Black Magazine, May 2009)

“Attention, MOVE: This Is America! You must abide by the laws of the United States!” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sambor declared through a loudspeaker, minutes before the May 13, 1985 police assault on the revolutionary MOVE organization’s home. This assault killed 5 children and 6 adults, including MOVE founder John Africa. That morning police shot over 10,000 rounds of bullets into their West Philadelphia home, and detonated explosives on the front, and both sides of their house. Following an afternoon standstill, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on MOVE’s roof. The bomb started a fire that eventually destroyed 60 homes: the entire block of a middle-class black neighborhood. 13-year old Birdie Africa and 30-year old Ramona Africa were the only survivors, after they dodged police gunfire and escaped from the fire with permanent burn scars. (watch video)

The Love Park 4 case is still slowly winding its way through the court
system after almost 2 years. Since the defendants' successful court
date in December (see http://tinyurl.com/cyb9ux), the State has
decided to appeal the judge's order to reveal the identity of the
undercover narcotics officers posing as neo-Nazis in Love Park on July
23, 2007.

On Tuesday May 12th, Judge Frank Palumbo will hear the State's appeal.
It has taken four court appearances since December to get to this

By Hans Bennett

“My soul cries from all that I witnessed and endured. It does more than cry, it mourns continuously,” said Black Panther Robert Hillary King, following his release from the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 2001, after serving his last 29 years in continuous solitary confinement. King argues that slavery persists in Angola and other US prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." King says: “You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent.”

Since his release, King has fought tirelessly for the freedom of his imprisoned comrades Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who are the two co-founders of the Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP)—the only official prison chapter of the BPP. They have now spent over 36 years in solitary confinement. Together, they are known as the Angola Three, a trio of BPP political prisoners whose supporters include Amnesty International, Desmond Tutu, Congressman John Conyers, and the ACLU. Kgalema Mothlante, the President of South Africa says their case “has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire US system.” King, Woodfox, and Wallace’s federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that their time in solitary confinement is “cruel and unusual punishment,” will go to trial any month in Baton Rouge, at the U.S. Middle District Court.